Weill Cornell Medicine has been awarded a four-year, $2.7 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to establish a Diversity Center of Excellence dedicated to increasing the number of minority physicians in academic medicine.
The HRSA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is administering the grant through its Centers of Excellence program. Established in 1991, the program supports health professions schools that strive to train and retain underrepresented minority students and faculty. Weill Cornell Medicine is one of only 19 graduate schools across the country, and the only medical school in New York state, to receive the grant.
“Our population is becoming more diverse, but our healthcare professional population hasn’t kept up,” said Dr. Susana Morales, an associate professor of clinical medicine and co-principal investigator of the grant. “Here at Weill Cornell Medicine, we are committed to increasing diversity. This grant is exciting not only because there’s potential to do a lot of good, it also allows us to be a part of the institution’s larger diversity efforts.”
Weill Cornell Medicine’s Diversity Center of Excellence will operate under the auspices of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, which was established at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell’s Ithaca campus in March to better understand why health outcomes vary among demographic groups.
“The Diversity Center of Excellence is a crucial piece of our Cornell Center for Health Equity strategic plan and we are thrilled to see it coming to fruition,” said Dr. Monika Safford, co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, the John J. Kuiper Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-principal investigator of the grant.